Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer has a lot to say on our country’s criminal system – some good, some bad.

That was clear from a speech he made Tuesday to the American Lawyer/National Law Journal Summit that discussed the serious challenges facing sentencing and corrections policy in the United States. In his remarks, Breuer raised concerns about how we help formerly incarcerated individuals become productive members of society, as well as what he understands to be disparities in how people are sentenced in the federal system.

First and foremost, AAG Breuer is entirely correct when he says that a person’s story is not finished once he or she is sentenced to prison. Simply locking people up and forgetting about them is both immoral and irresponsible. In order to keep our communities safe and reduce crime, we must provide incarcerated individuals with the tools to turn their lives around once they are released.

As Attorney General Eric Holder put it, “We must use every tool at our disposal to tear down the unnecessary barriers to economic opportunities and independence so that formerly incarcerated individuals can serve as productive members of their communities.”

It was this belief that led Congress to pass the Second Chance Act in 2008, which provides funding for employment assistance, substance abuse treatment, mentoring, victims support and other services geared at reducing recidivism. Unfortunately, our current fiscal situation has put all government spending on the chopping block – including the Second Chance Act. Nonetheless, the ACLU is pleased to hear that the Justice Department considers Second Chance Act programs to be succeeding and hopes the Department will urge Congress to continue fully funding these indispensable initiatives.

While AAG’s Breuer’s comments about the need for robust re-entry programs are very encouraging, he went on to make a problematic assertion: that sentencing disparities have increased since the Supreme Court’s decisions in U.S. v. Booker and Gall v. U.S., which ended mandatory sentencing and implemented an advisory guideline system. Although the ACLU and others have already addressed the flaws contained in this belief, it appears to have turned into a zombie claim that keeps coming back from the dead.

The truth is, while racial disparities are rife in our criminal justice system, the change from mandatory to advisory sentencing guidelines is not a contributor to this deeply troubling reality.

The source of this confusion is a March 2010 report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which showed an increase in sentencing differences between black and white male offenders between 2005 and 2009 (the period following the implementation of our current advisory sentencing system). But this assertion is misleading: in fact, the Commissions’ report conceded that under a more expansive analysis spanning between 1999 and 2009, the greatest difference in the length of sentences between black and white offenders occurred in 1999, when sentencing was mandatory. And further, researchers at Pennsylvania State University analyzed the Commission’s data sets with different methodology and found “racial and gender sentence length disparities are less today, under advisory Guidelines, than they were when the Guidelines were arguably their most rigid and constraining.”

Despite his misguided assertion about sentencing disparities, AAG Breuer’s statement is an essential part of an important and ongoing dialogue. With ballooning prison populations and shrinking budgets, now is the time for serious thought about how we sentence individuals and how we treat those people once they are sentenced.

If we want to reduce recidivism, ensure public safety and give those who are incarcerated the opportunity for redemption, we must continue funding the Second Chance Act and similar rehabilitation and education initiatives. If we want to reduce the uncontrollable cost of incarceration, we cannot go back to the days when judges had no discretion in how long a sentence a person would receive in their courtroom.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this post stated that AAG Breuer gave the speech on Wednesday. That was in correct. It was Tuesday.

Learn more about sentencing disparities: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we’ve spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.

New ACLU Report on Dangers of Private Prisons
This week, the ACLU National Prison Project released Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration, which provides a comprehensive analysis of the destructive impact of prison privatization. As the report underscores, now is the time for serious criminal justice reform, not privatization schemes.

• Read the report, along with the press release and a blog post by author David Shapiro. Shapiro also penned this op-ed for CNBC.com.
• Hear about our work to improve the horrific conditions at the privately-owned Idaho Correctional Center in this CNBC documentary about the business of for-profit prisons that aired last month.
• Read our blog series exploring the connected issues of private prisons, immigration detention and mass incarceration.
• Watch ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero describe our work to fight the widespread and rampant abuse of immigration detainees, many of whom are held in private prisons, in this episode of PBS Frontline and read a Los Angeles Times story about our lawsuit on behalf of some of the victims.
• Visit our interactive map documenting this widespread abuse.

Senate Drops the Ball on Crime Commission Amendment
Despite our efforts, the Senate failed to adopt (by 3 votes) an important amendment last month that would have created a bipartisan commission to study our criminal justice system and suggest reforms. On Tuesday, Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) issued a harsh recrimination of Senate Republicans for this failure. This piece in the Atlantic highlights the ACLU’s support of the proposal, and you can read Senator Webb’s statement here. Read ACLU Legislative Counsel Jennifer Bellamy’s blog about the amendment.

Retroactive Reduction in Sentencing Disparities
Years of ACLU advocacy to eliminate the crack-cocaine sentencing disparity paid off last year with the passage of the federal Fair Sentencing Act. Retroactive application of the new guidelines began this week, and now ACLU client Hamedah Hasan and more than 12,000 others unfairly sentenced under the old guidelines will have the opportunity to have their sentences for crack cocaine offenses reviewed by a federal judge and possibly reduced. Listen to ACLU Senior Legislative Counsel Jesselyn McCurdy discuss the story in this NPR piece, which aired this week.

Fighting Mandatory Drug Testing
The ACLU has been leading the charge to challenge a disturbing national trend: mandatory drug testing of public college students and the poor. The ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project and ACLU of Eastern Missouri filed suit in Missouri to arguing that Linn State Technical College’s drug testing of all students violated the Fourth Amendment. Taking swift action, a federal district court judge granted a preliminary injunction to temporarily halt the unconstitutional policy. Read this blog post about the victory, and this story from the AP. The ACLU of Florida filed suit challenging the state’s forced drug testing of applicants for temporary cash assistance (TANF). Last week, a judge in Florida has halted enforcement of this unconstitutional policy. Read ACLU of Florida’s Maria Kayanan’s blog post about the victory and the press release. Read Rachel Bloom’s blog post about the drug testing trend and further coverage in the New York Times.

Learn more about overincarceration: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

Today, Hamedah Hasan can finally apply for her freedom.

Hamedah has been locked up for 18 years serving a prison sentence she never deserved.

When she was 21 years old, she and her two daughters escaped an abusive relationship to live with her cousin. Feeling indebted to this cousin, who was involved in dealing crack cocaine, she agreed to run various errands and transfer money. Though Hamedah never used drugs herself, she was later indicted and convicted for conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. Despite a previously clean record, the judge had no choice but to issue a life sentence, due to mandatory minimums for crack cocaine and the mandatory sentencing guidelines then on the books.

Hamedah's sentence was later reduced to 27 years. Had she been convicted of an offense involving powder as opposed to crack cocaine, she would never have faced such a harsh penalty. — at the time of her sentencing, the disparity between sentences for crack and powder cocaine was 100-to-1.

Since Hamedah's sentencing, things have changed for the better. Last year, Congress took a major step toward ensuring fairness in the criminal justice system by passing the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which reduced racial disparities caused by draconian crack cocaine sentencing laws.

The FSA made two major changes to federal sentencing law: first, it decreased the disparity between the mandatory minimum sentences for certain quantities of crack and powder cocaine to 18-to-1 by lowering crack sentences; and second, it eliminated the mandatory minimum for simple possession of crack cocaine.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission then decided to apply the sentencing guidelines under the FSA retroactively. That means beginning today, those who were given an unfairly harsh sentence for crack possession under the old law can now apply for sentence reductions under the new guidelines.

Hamedah will be one of more than 12,000 people — 85 percent of whom are African-American — who will have the opportunity to have their sentences for crack cocaine offenses reviewed by a federal judge and possibly reduced.

This is important not only for the many unjust personal stories like Hamedah's, it's also a huge victory in reducing racial disparities and restoring confidence in the criminal justice system. For years, the harsher penalties for crack versus powder disproportionately impacted African-Americans.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission has done its part to ensure the sentencing guidelines apply retroactively, and the FSA will go a long way in fixing this longstanding injustice in the future.

But more is needed from Congress to ensure that the entire statute applies retroactively and more people serving unfair sentences under the old law can benefit from lower minimum sentences under FSA.

A new bill, the Fair Sentencing Clarification Act of 2011, would do just that. You can help: take action by calling on your member of Congress to support the Fair Sentencing Clarification Act of 2011 now. Without it, many of those who were harshly punished under the old crack cocaine law won't have the opportunity for relief, and an unmistakable inequality in the system will persist.

Learn more about drug sentencing: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

The ruling is in: Linn State Technical College’s mandatory drug-testing policy is patently unconstitutional, and will not stand. After a seven-hour hearing Tuesday, Judge Nanette K. Laughrey of the Western District of Missouri granted our preliminary injunction against the public school, blocking any further drug testing or analysis of urine samples already taken from students. We are thrilled to share this victory with our brave plaintiffs and their peers, who stood up to the school officials who attempted to blindside their constitutionally protected right to privacy.

As we wrote last month, the school had implemented mandatory, suspicionless drug-testing of all incoming students, as well as students who were returning to school after an extended absence. The policy came with little warning and a $50 price tag per test – paid by the students. In implementing the policy, Linn State sought foolishly to go where no public college had gone before – and where we hope none will go in the future, thanks to the judge’s ruling. Explaining her rationale for granting the preliminary injunction, Judge Laughrey referenced all of our key arguments against the policy, ultimately agreeing that it violated the students’ Fourth Amendment rights and was overbroad in its scope, impacting all students rather than a specific subset whose class work might involve heavy machinery.

This decision comes on the heels of another drug-testing related triumph – on Monday, a district court judge in Florida ruled against a new law mandating drug tests for all applicants to the state’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, similarly finding the law violated the Fourth Amendment rights of recipients of public assistance. It’s our hope that this week’s one-two punch of rulings against suspicionless drug-testing will serve as a reminder to law and policy makers in states across the country who may be considering similar moves.

Students who attend public institutions do not check their constitutional rights at the door when they walk into the classroom or write a tuition check, and neither do poor families who apply for public assistance. For the powers that be to suggest otherwise is an abomination that should deeply trouble us all. Thankfully, we have the law on our side.

Learn more about drug testing: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.